


To Have and To Hold

by Severina



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: getyourwordsout, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 00:25:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6098817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Always got time to appreciate the pretty things, Daryl," she said when she finally started slowly toward him. The leaves rustled beneath her old scuffed boots; there was a bramble stuck in her hair and a jagged hole in the sleeve of her sweater.</p>
<p>He watched her come and knew she was right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Have and To Hold

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate S5, Beth never got taken at the funeral home, la la la. Written for LJ's getyourwordsout bingo, for this photo prompt:
> 
> [ ](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Severina2001/media/gywo%20bingo/08%20covered%20bridge_zps81zxlc9f.jpg.html)
> 
> * * *

They'd left the walkers a mile or more behind, but Daryl still set a fast pace as they hustled through the woods. Night came on too fast, 'specially with all the cover overhead, and he wanted at least another couple of miles under their belts before they stopped and strung up a perimeter. 

The bridge came up after a curve in the road, a little rickety thing over a slow-moving stream so narrow a man could practically leap across it. He was halfway through before he realized that Beth had hung back. He stopped, opened his mouth to ask what the damn hold up was, but she had that look in her eye. The one that he remembered from the golf course and the funeral home. The one that said she was thinking thoughts that he wouldn't even have considered at all 'til they came out of her mouth and he heard the truth of them. Sometimes she shared them; sometimes she didn't.

It was another moment before she saw him looking; smiled and ducked her head. "It's just pretty," she said.

It wasn't what she was really thinking… or at least, not all of it. He knew Beth well enough to know she'd tell him the rest in her own sweet time, or not at all.

"Ain't got time for pretty," he answered. But he still leaned a shoulder against the post, waited while her eyes followed the lines of the old wood and she looked her fill.

"Always got time to appreciate the pretty things, Daryl," she said when she finally started slowly toward him. The leaves rustled beneath her old scuffed boots; there was a bramble stuck in her hair and a jagged hole in the sleeve of her sweater. 

He watched her come and knew she was right.

She inched forward, heedless of the walkers on their back trail. The sun caught in her hair and set it to shining before she reached the dappled shade of the bridge and reached out to run a finger along the railing. 

"When I was little," she continued, "I used to cut out pictures from catalogues and old magazines my Mom brought home from the beauty parlour. I'd paste them into this big ol' scrapbook. Thing must've weighed fifty pounds by the time I was through!" She smiled at him, but her gaze was fixed inward and he wasn't sure she saw him at all. "I had pictures of wedding dresses, places where I thought I'd go for my honeymoon someday. Silly things. And I had a whole bunch of pictures of covered bridges just like this one. Though they'd be perfect for the wedding photos."

He had no trouble envisioning her in his mind's eye, pigtails and braces and white paste on her fingers. Holding the scissors real careful like Hershel'd taught her, magazines spread out on the bedspread around her and her tongue poking out of her mouth as she tried to cut a straight line. He could see that little girl clear as a bell, same as he can see the woman she grew into. 

"I appreciate you," he mumbled.

She'd reached him by then, her finger trailing on the splintered wood, and this time when she smiled it was for him and not some old memory tinged with more than a little sadness. "Not just 'cause I'm pretty, I hope."

Daryl's shoulder scraped against the post. "Pretty fuckin' badass, too."

Beth let her knapsack slip from her shoulders before leaning next to him, her hands tucked behind her and wrapped around the railing. In the silence that had been filled by their huffing breaths and the rustle of the leaves underfoot the birds renewed their song; the breeze slipped through the gaps between the posts and lifted her hair. 

"Kinda sad, though," she said. "That's there's not gonna be any more weddings."

"World's all new," Daryl said. He pushed off from the post and slid his hands to her waist, because he can't _not_ touch her. Not when she's this close and she's got that look in her eye that says she's remembering all they've lost and isn't able to come up with a way to fix it. "Can do whatever you want."

"No preachers," Beth pointed out.

"Don't need 'em. Wasn't them that married people anyway."

"Reverend Michaels would beg to differ."

"Reverend Michaels is probably a walking corpse right about now," Daryl said. He felt her tense beneath his fingers, tightened his grip and ran his thumbs along her sides to take away the sting. "'Sides," he continued, "I bet he'd agree with me. Most men o' god I knew figured out that it was the couple that was doin' the marryin', with God giving his blessing if you believe in that sort of thing. The guy in the collar standin' at the altar was just a… what do you call it... a proxy."

"That's true," Beth said after a moment. "It's the words and the feelings that matter, not who's there to witness them."

The sliver of skin he'd found was warm and soft beneath his thumbs, her body relaxed and pliant against his. The birds finished their song and began another, and beneath this tiny covered bridge it was easy to believe that all was good in the world. That maybe they could stay in this little pocket of time, just the two of them, and be happy.

His throat was dry, and he had to swallow twice before he could begin.

"I, Daryl, take you, Beth…"

Her head came up sharply, her eyes bright. He froze under that gaze, the words of the pledge tumbling about helter-skelter in his brain. He became aware that he'd clutched her too tightly only when she shifted, and would have scampered back and away and tried to fumble a way to take it all back had her hands not come up to rest against his chest. And then she smiled at him, and there was nothing rueful about it. It was the smile that lit her up from within, and lit him up too.

"I, Beth, take you Daryl," she said, her voice clear and strong, "to be my lawfully wedded… no. Can't be lawfully." She cocked her head. "To be my… morally? Spiritually?"

"To be mine," Daryl said softly.

Her breath hitched, and the hands that had smoothed against his chest shook just a little when they moved to his shoulders. 

"To be mine," she repeated. "To have and to hold, for better and for worse…"

"For poorer, 'cause there ain't no richer anymore."

"I'm not so sure about that. Sometimes I feel like the richest person on earth," Beth said. "In sickness and in health."

"As long as we both shall live."

"As long as we both shall live," Beth echoed. Her teeth found her bottom lip; her eyes shone. But her hands, when they wrapped around his neck and tugged him down, were sure and strong. And her lips met his without hesitation, as sweet as fresh berries dipped in honey.

When they parted she beamed at him. And he knew he was grinning goofily back. 

And he also knew that somewhere behind them there was still a dozen walkers making their slow, steady, relentless push through the woods and they had miles to go before they'd be safe enough to stop for the night. That he still had to find them something to eat when they stopped, 'cause they'd eaten the last of their reserves that morning at breakfast. If Merle could see him now he'd slap him on the head and tell him to get a move on, already.

But the birds sang and the autumn breeze was gentle and for a moment – just for a moment, in this little slip of time – none of that mattered.

Daryl ducked his head and kissed his wife again.


End file.
